Normally I like a good car analogy, but your beer analogy is genius.
So my car analogy would be the PC guy sees value in a Ford Taurus, because the parts are cheap when they break, but the Mac guy likes the BMW because it is freakin' awesome, irrespective of insane maintenance costs.
For some of us who can afford it, the cost of nice beer, cars and computers is worth it.
This whole "you don't own your own stuff" FUD is old. I have lots of Apple stuff and I own it all. The only thing that Apple offers that you don't own is video rentals.
What other criterion is there with which to judge the actions of a company?
The quality of their product, regardless of profits for old white board members? As a user and a consumer, I couldn't care less how profitable the stockholders of Apple are, as long as they continue to make enough money to keep making products I want to buy.
If you think of companies as nice or not nice, good or evil, you will be constantly disappointed. They are judged on profitability.
There are plenty of companies who put altruistic things ahead of profit.
The fact "users" is #4 is frankly why most people who dislike Microsoft dislike Microsoft. They are like that guy at work who thinks it's the user's fault and not the documentation.
But they didn't fail. They may have failed on your two selective points (debatable), but any failures they made were completely offset by the desktop publishing and photo editing industry dominance.
Gotta revise your history. The Mac clones were great performers and were only "terrible" because they used standard cheapish components and suffered slightly with reliability, whereas PowerMacs of the same era tended to use a little better components. My Motorola box was aggressively spec'd at a low price (the trade-off being it was several hundred dollars cheaper and better spec'd than the closest Mac). My business partner's PowerComputing far outlived our two PowerPC Macs of the same era.
Or maybe you are just a bit more paranoid than the average citizen cares to be. Seriously don't care what flickr does with pictures of my kids, or what Facebook does with pictures of me at a football game. Sorry.
flickr is so different. It actually lets you store your photos at actual size and original resolution. Can't remember the last time Facebook stored my 15megapixel image for me. Seems when I uploaded it, and then grabbed a copy from my profile, it lost about 13megapixels in the process and added some horrible compression scheme for good taste.
Not that I blame Facebook...that's not the right tool...and thus it is far different from flickr.
Oh wait, Win7 came bundled with my computer...no wonder it was such a pleasurable upgrade experience (because I didn't actually update anything). I'm thinking of the video card swap I did that required the restarts.
I jumped out of home Windows use after Win98SE and recently got back in with Win7 (upgraded from XP), and the Win7 was the only pleasant install experience I've ever had with Windows.
Still required several restarts, but at least it worked first try.
Try to upgrade the original Macintosh to OSX Lion. Hehehehehe.
He wasn't upgrading an old PC from Win1 to Win7, he was updating a modern PC from 1-7, which is nothing like what you suggest.
This whole premise is stupid. As long as companies don't make perfectly good hardware obsolete via OS updates, this is a dumb conversation. By the time OSX Lion came out, I had no need for a mid 1990s Macintosh computer, for example.
To be fair, this is one of Windows strengths. It's not perfect but lets give credit where credit's due.
Yeah, but a strength at what cost of progress? Not trolling, something to ponder. How much is the backward compatibility requirement holding back Windows innovation?
Yes. Hard way to learn is to move there as an American. England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales = the 4 countries that comprise The United Kingdom.
Not to be confused with just Britain, which is the island that houses Scotland, Wales, and England, but not Northern Ireland.
So asking somebody if they are British is really confusing...that's anyone who lives on the main island.
Calling somebody English when they are from Wales is insulting (and vice-versa)
Then there's the whole nonsense of the Kingdom that includes Canada and India (and others).
What I got out of it was each subsequent version of Windows was hamstrung because of trying to preserve backwards compatibility that may or may not be useful. So what it didn't maintain the same desktop background color. Even when it did remember settings, it's not like any upgrade version of Windows ever has been fast and painless for being able to remember settings.
Win7 is the only upgrade I've made that pretty much everything still works for me AND it doesn't feel limited by this requirement of backwards compatibility.
Kudos to Monkey Island still working and all, but at some point you gotta just cut the chord and start fresh. Given the choice of being able to play 1994 video games and run 1991 spreadsheets, and/or having a modern computer that runs modern stuff very well, I'll take the later.
Even if they continued that trend, it would be 26 of 400,000, which is still lower than 11 per 100,000. Regardless, my point is the guy wasn't just making shit up when he said he ran the numbers, and it is easy to confirm that the numbers are indeed available.
Yeah, I saw the other plant and the three year span as well. I was merely demonstrating that it's not that hard to validate what the first guy said and perhaps he wasn't just pulling numbers out of his ass.
That's a big problem on slashdot. You have a thesis and have looked into it? Oh yeah? Well I disagree, so prove it! Lame. This is a forum for geeks, not an online college requiring citations.
Sure, for some people that is the best option. My wife goes to college (hold the, "your mom goes to college" jokes, please) and she'd love to replace her Macbook with an iPad, if not just for the toting it around campus all day.
You aren't throwing it away, you are returning it to Apple for a replacement. And if the battery doesn't work anymore, it isn't exactly perfectly good hardware anymore either.
No disagreement here. But for some people, not having a USB port is a fair trade off for not having to carry bunch of dorky gear around. An iPad fits within the leather binder I already carry for business, so the device is very inconspicuous, which is important in many fields. Not that I have an iPad or would even want one...just providing logical reasons why people would buy a $500+ that leaves off things like USB.
Slashdot Mirror
Normally I like a good car analogy, but your beer analogy is genius.
So my car analogy would be the PC guy sees value in a Ford Taurus, because the parts are cheap when they break, but the Mac guy likes the BMW because it is freakin' awesome, irrespective of insane maintenance costs.
For some of us who can afford it, the cost of nice beer, cars and computers is worth it.
I have a 2nd HDD for my iMac. It resides in my closet, acts as a wireless router, and backs up all four of my computers.
Oh, you want a 2nd HDD inside the computer? Riiiight. Not meeting your arbitrary requirements doesn't make a company evil.
I find it hard to understand how you can say Apple is insignificant in the notebook markets, for starters.
This whole "you don't own your own stuff" FUD is old. I have lots of Apple stuff and I own it all. The only thing that Apple offers that you don't own is video rentals.
Apple isn't forcing anyone to do anything. Publishers are free to take their business elsewhere.
Yes, Apple hates Flash so much that Adobe Flash (every version ever made by Adobe) doesn't exist for OSX...oh wait....
What other criterion is there with which to judge the actions of a company?
The quality of their product, regardless of profits for old white board members? As a user and a consumer, I couldn't care less how profitable the stockholders of Apple are, as long as they continue to make enough money to keep making products I want to buy.
If you think of companies as nice or not nice, good or evil, you will be constantly disappointed. They are judged on profitability.
There are plenty of companies who put altruistic things ahead of profit.
The fact "users" is #4 is frankly why most people who dislike Microsoft dislike Microsoft. They are like that guy at work who thinks it's the user's fault and not the documentation.
But they didn't fail. They may have failed on your two selective points (debatable), but any failures they made were completely offset by the desktop publishing and photo editing industry dominance.
Gotta revise your history. The Mac clones were great performers and were only "terrible" because they used standard cheapish components and suffered slightly with reliability, whereas PowerMacs of the same era tended to use a little better components. My Motorola box was aggressively spec'd at a low price (the trade-off being it was several hundred dollars cheaper and better spec'd than the closest Mac). My business partner's PowerComputing far outlived our two PowerPC Macs of the same era.
Or maybe you are just a bit more paranoid than the average citizen cares to be. Seriously don't care what flickr does with pictures of my kids, or what Facebook does with pictures of me at a football game. Sorry.
flickr is so different. It actually lets you store your photos at actual size and original resolution. Can't remember the last time Facebook stored my 15megapixel image for me. Seems when I uploaded it, and then grabbed a copy from my profile, it lost about 13megapixels in the process and added some horrible compression scheme for good taste.
Not that I blame Facebook...that's not the right tool...and thus it is far different from flickr.
Moooohahahahahahahahahahahah....awesome post!
It's like the first time you reach the top step of your mom's basement!
It's like the first time you killed a raid boss.
It's like the first time you rolled three sixes for your warriors strength and dexterity, and then rolled 15 for charisma, just because.
It's like winning your first hand of Magic!
(hey, I'm guilty of most of these)
Oh wait, Win7 came bundled with my computer...no wonder it was such a pleasurable upgrade experience (because I didn't actually update anything). I'm thinking of the video card swap I did that required the restarts.
I jumped out of home Windows use after Win98SE and recently got back in with Win7 (upgraded from XP), and the Win7 was the only pleasant install experience I've ever had with Windows.
Still required several restarts, but at least it worked first try.
Try to upgrade the original Macintosh to OSX Lion. Hehehehehe.
He wasn't upgrading an old PC from Win1 to Win7, he was updating a modern PC from 1-7, which is nothing like what you suggest.
This whole premise is stupid. As long as companies don't make perfectly good hardware obsolete via OS updates, this is a dumb conversation. By the time OSX Lion came out, I had no need for a mid 1990s Macintosh computer, for example.
To be fair, this is one of Windows strengths. It's not perfect but lets give credit where credit's due.
Yeah, but a strength at what cost of progress? Not trolling, something to ponder. How much is the backward compatibility requirement holding back Windows innovation?
Yes. Hard way to learn is to move there as an American. England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales = the 4 countries that comprise The United Kingdom.
Not to be confused with just Britain, which is the island that houses Scotland, Wales, and England, but not Northern Ireland.
So asking somebody if they are British is really confusing...that's anyone who lives on the main island.
Calling somebody English when they are from Wales is insulting (and vice-versa)
Then there's the whole nonsense of the Kingdom that includes Canada and India (and others).
What I got out of it was each subsequent version of Windows was hamstrung because of trying to preserve backwards compatibility that may or may not be useful. So what it didn't maintain the same desktop background color. Even when it did remember settings, it's not like any upgrade version of Windows ever has been fast and painless for being able to remember settings.
Win7 is the only upgrade I've made that pretty much everything still works for me AND it doesn't feel limited by this requirement of backwards compatibility.
Kudos to Monkey Island still working and all, but at some point you gotta just cut the chord and start fresh. Given the choice of being able to play 1994 video games and run 1991 spreadsheets, and/or having a modern computer that runs modern stuff very well, I'll take the later.
Even if they continued that trend, it would be 26 of 400,000, which is still lower than 11 per 100,000. Regardless, my point is the guy wasn't just making shit up when he said he ran the numbers, and it is easy to confirm that the numbers are indeed available.
Yeah, I saw the other plant and the three year span as well. I was merely demonstrating that it's not that hard to validate what the first guy said and perhaps he wasn't just pulling numbers out of his ass.
That's a big problem on slashdot. You have a thesis and have looked into it? Oh yeah? Well I disagree, so prove it! Lame. This is a forum for geeks, not an online college requiring citations.
Sure, for some people that is the best option. My wife goes to college (hold the, "your mom goes to college" jokes, please) and she'd love to replace her Macbook with an iPad, if not just for the toting it around campus all day.
You aren't throwing it away, you are returning it to Apple for a replacement. And if the battery doesn't work anymore, it isn't exactly perfectly good hardware anymore either.
No disagreement here. But for some people, not having a USB port is a fair trade off for not having to carry bunch of dorky gear around. An iPad fits within the leather binder I already carry for business, so the device is very inconspicuous, which is important in many fields. Not that I have an iPad or would even want one...just providing logical reasons why people would buy a $500+ that leaves off things like USB.
If you need a device to do those 99% of things, then buy an iPad.
Well, yes, that's my point exactly.